Practice Makes Perfect: The Power of Ritual
Your growth and development with your communications coach will be increasingly effective if it is paired with considered and consistent practice.
PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE
Whether learning a language or training for a marathon, it is said that 90 days’ commitment to a craft or skill is the break point where your body begins to crave the benefits of ritual practice. With exercise, our bodies grow used to the endorphins released and there is a physical desire to keep up the effort.
To truly maximise the outcome of your sessions with your communication coach, you should take time between sessions to focus on the skills you are developing. Thankfully, we encounter opportunities to stretch our communication muscles on a daily basis.
HEIGHTENED SPEECH
In delivering a pitch or presentation, you are displaying a polished and rehearsed version of yourself. In performance, we aren’t replacing our natural communication style with one built on artifice, instead we are presenting a heightened version of ourselves crafted with intention, and centred on highlighting those aspects that breed confidence and trust.
To achieve this amplified style, it is of great value to rehearse not only the pitch itself, but also to practise the techniques provided by your communications coach that will give your voice a strong foundation.
Like any craft, drilling the foundational skills is fundamental to improvement. Breath, movement and increased articulation can all be improved through regular practice. This needn’t be hours of training each week. Tongue exercises, and simple massage techniques designed to loosen up your jaw, and give you increased control over your instrument need take up no more than five minutes each day. In the time it takes to boil your kettle each morning, you can run through tricky tongue twisters that daily improve your overall vocal capacity.
LITTLE BY LITTLE
Your capacity for great performance will expand with each rehearsal and the greatest gift you can grant yourself is time. Trying to memorise the words, or structure to a large presentation can be a daunting prospect. Giving yourself time to divide the presentation into manageable sections will serve you better. To rehearse, or develop the performance in stages will be less overwhelming and provide you with smaller victories on the path to your overall success.
Working on the final project alongside the overall development of your communications skills gives you the opportunity for periodical improvement and gives your communications journey momentum.
Like any physical or intellectual transformation, you can’t underestimate the value of rest. Rest allows our bodies and minds the space needed to revisit the project revitalised, which in turn improves the effort you can put in as you proceed. It does us no favours to work to exhaustion or frustration. Little and often is the key to success, providing you with incremental growth and time in between to absorb the benefits of your effort.
Pairing your own time to practise with the sessions with your communications coach puts you in a stronger position each time a session begins. Rather than simply revisiting the work discussed in the previous session and starting cold each week, you will be ready to advance with your coach at a much faster rate.
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
As you are practising your communications skills, you will notice improvements that evolve through each stage of your communications journey. Improving primary communication skills such as breath and articulation will give you a fluidity with your words, that grants you freedom of movement. Improved movement will build your stage presence and improve your connection with your audience. Better engagement with your audience will allow you more freedom on stage, and give you the confidence to perform with ease. Using all of these skills in harmony with one another will give your message the greatest chance of being heard, understood and valued.
You have the power to improve at whatever pace you wish, provided you put in thoughtful and considered practice. What begins as a conscious approach to the work, becomes an unconscious skill and a natural component of your presentation style.
Commitment to weekly and daily practises as part of your communication growth will yield outsized results that expand the opportunities within your sessions with a communication coach. No matter where your communications journey begins, ritual practises, that needn’t overtake your schedule, can have long-lasting benefits that ease your relationship with any audience, and provide you with invaluable and transferable presentation skills you can use throughout your life.
